Facing Bihar government proceedings for 10 years for alleged sexual exploitation of a woman, 1994 batch IPS officer Amitabh Kumar Das has been fully reinstated, seven months after the supreme court ruled in his favour.

A senior IPS officer, who had been facing departmental proceedings for the last 10 years on some very serious charges, including the allegation that he sexually exploited a woman, has forced the Bihar government to fully reinstate him.

The revocation of proceedings against 1994 batch IPS officer Amitabh Kumar Das came on Thursday, almost seven months after the supreme court dismissed the charges against him. The apex court passed the order in his favour on September 30, 2016.

“The truth has prevailed”, said Das, who remains in the rank of superintendent of police (SP), after putting in 23 years of service as a Bihar cadre IPS officer. He now wants the government to make up for his lost years and restore his lost seniority through a ‘double promotion’.

“I have written to Bihar’s principal secretary (home) to directly promote me to the rank of inspector general of police (superseding the intervening rank of deputy inspector general), to which all my IPS batch mates have already been promoted”, Das told HT.

The Bihar cadre officer’s travails began in 2007, when a woman brought charges of ‘sexual exploitation’ against him. Das was commandant of Bihar military police-11 at that time and was posted at Jamui in south-eastern Bihar.

At the behest of the state government, an inquiry was conducted against Das by the then superintendent of police (SP) of Vaishali (in north Bihar), Preeta Verma, who found the charges against Das to be false.

The government then ordered departmental proceedings against Das, who had charges of indiscipline and conduct unbecoming of an officer, adding, to the original charge levelled by a woman.

Again, the then departmental enquiry commissioner and 1974-batch IAS officer S P Keshav gave Das a clean chit after the girl did not appear before him for 18 months, to back up her charges against the officer.

Later, in 2009, the government decided to go in for another departmental proceeding, which the officer challenged in the central administrative tribunal (CAT). The CAT, too, ruled in favour of Das and termed the government’s move as “misuse of procedure”.

Das had pleaded before the tribunal that the departmental proceedings against him had been started “out of vendetta”, being pursued, allegedly, by a former union minister from Bihar, after he (Das), as SP, railways, had hinted at wrong-doing in the award of railway contracts.

Four years later, in 2013, the government went into appeal against the CAT order, in the Patna high court, which was rejected on October 29, 2015.

The Bihar government then moved the apex court, where its SLP was rejected by the double bench of justice R K Agarwal and justice Ashok Bhusan, last year. However, it tookanother seven months for his reinstatement to come about.

Das was earlier in the news as SP of Arwal in south-central Bihar, in 2005, when, in a report, he had recommended the slapping of POTA on Ranveer Sena, a private army of landlords, which is now defunct.

Das again kicked up a storm in November 2014, when as SP, Bihar human rights commission, he wrote a letter to IG (special branch) Jitendra Singh Gangwar, informing him of the alleged ‘cordial relations’ between (now union minister) Giriraj Singh and the proscribed Ranveer Sena.